


Postmortem

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Autopsies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He wipes his hand on his forehead, and it’s an empire’s dead blood that dries upon his face." Sokolov has never performed an autopsy on an empress and friend, and hopes to never do so again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postmortem

**Author's Note:**

> Pathopharmacology/ghostsoldier provided the lovely headcanon about Jessamine's (ridiculous) makeup.

There’s a portrait of the Empress that hangs in Sokolov’s favorite pub, above the taps, and the men often direct off-color jokes toward it as the night wears on. He has always thought the portrait was beautiful. Even though it’s not one of his. Even through the soot and the waterstained corner and the warped canvas. Her skin is pale and her eyes are wide and very dark and her face looks too pure to be human, something carved from marble, precious and divine; there’s a curve to the corner of the portrait’s mouth, and he’s found himself wondering (as the glasses refill and refill) if it’s the start of a smile or a sob.

It has to be a smile. Sokolov is fiercely proud all of his paintings, yes, but that of Jessamine Kaldwin is the one that he adores the least. It was painted on a chill day, and she’d been unable to hold a smile long, and he’d gotten the lighting and her pose all wrong and the painting had been lovely, yes –  and stiff, and _somber_. Empress Jessamine is reserved, or can be. But he has done her a disservice. She is not a somber woman. She is a woman who smiles easily, honestly, often.

Is.

Was.

Sokolov will never get a second chance to paint her. But that’s a horrible thought. He hasn’t been called here today for his skill with a brush.

He swallows hard, and he picks up the sifter of brandy on the counter and downs it in one long swallow, and then he picks up the surgeon’s knife.

The autopsy report is a formality at this point; everyone knows what she died from. Any fool can look at her and see. He is meticulous, just the same. Single stab wound. Clean. Vertically oriented, roughly seven centimeters in length at entry and five at exit. Straight through, not up, avoiding the ribcage and therefore the lungs. Not literally anywhere near the heart, though the poets and historians will correct that. Professional work. Damage to the spinal column. Severe damage to the abdominal aorta, several hundred milliliters of blood inside the abdominal cavity, associated hemorrhaging – cause of death: exsanguination, shock, giant bloody stab wound, betrayal.

At least Corvo had been quick.

He feels like he is touching something holy. In both his portrait and the painting above his favorite bar, with her eyes fixed on a point just beyond the frame, Jessamine was royalty manifest. At court, when the doors were shut and the lamps lit late into the night, she was a lovely and beloved woman. Here, naked, stretched on the autopsy table with her skin the blue-white of waxwork, she is… hollow. Pale and crumpled. Lesser. This… this isn’t right. This is not the girl he knew, not the woman who held the world in her palm. He’s not supposed to be touching her. Her body isn’t supposed to be made of the same stuff that other bodies are. She’s cold, and the smell is bad and meaty, and the blood is like slime, and he tries not to look at her breasts or the stretch marks on her belly or her face or –

The brandy sifter empties. The brandy sifter refills. He wipes his hand on his forehead, and it’s an empire’s dead blood that dries upon his face.

He’s very careful, sewing her up. He’s practiced on a hundred corpses at the Academy, but he has never worked on an Empress, and he has never worked on a _friend_. He hopes he never does again. His hands shake, a bit, but Sokolov takes his time, and the stitches are precise and fine. He wipes the blood from her skin with a damp cloth. He documents the bruising around her collarbone and neck. He lays a towel over her; he cannot dress her in the ruined things she died in, he has no wish to, he does not wish to touch her so and manipulate her limbs like a doll, and in any case there will be other men who choose her burial clothes.

Her eyes are closed.

Her hair is still up, undisturbed, the comb only slightly askew.

There is paint upon her face, lacquer on her nails. Dark mouth, color on her eyes as blue as the Void. Sokolov considers it, his lips pressed white and bloodless. It’s wrong, too; _everything_ is wrong in this little room, the smell and the ugliness of the body and the ugliness of what it means. But this paint isn’t ugly because it’s garish. It’s ugly because of what it means, too. Decent women and Empresses don’t paint their faces, this is absurd and whorish and wrong, but that’s not the _point_ –

Emily had been _so excited_ that Corvo was coming home.

He’d arrived at Dunwall Tower at dawn with his supplies under his arm to find the little princess running in circles around the inner yard, practically vibrating, hair uncombed, shoes missing. Jessamine had shouted a quick greeting to him and gone chasing after her. Sokolov had taken a long time setting up his easel, and the tower windows had been open to catch the breeze, and sound carried on clear days like this. He’d heard giggling from a high window. Jessamine bribing her daughter, _sit still, let me do your hair. You can do mine._

_Can I do your makeup too? Please, can I?_

_Of course!_

_We need to look pretty for Corvo._

_You always look pretty. You won’t need to worry about covering up your wrinkles until you’re old and tired like me._

Laughter.

The brandy sifter empties again. Sokolov sets his jaw. Carefully, he takes a little alcohol solution and wipes the color from her nails; carefully, gently, he dabs the color from her face. He wipes all traces of _you need to look pretty for Corvo_ away and applies just the subtlest tinge of red to her cheeks. He is an artist; she looks almost alive again.


End file.
